Although this was our last work day, we were able get all our work done and still have plenty of time to immerse ourselves in the activities of Half the Sky’s training sessions and the children.  Maybe we were super-efficient this week.  Or, far more likely, Mr. Liu (Half the Sky’s multitalented handyman/carpenter/Mr. Fixit) was doing so much work each evening after we left that our task was that much easier. 

Either way, it was wonderful to get extra time to see some of the amazing work going on here. 

Perhaps most notable today was getting to watch Debbie Tong, Half the Sky’s Associate Director, Special Needs, lead a demonstration for a group of foster moms for Changchun’s new Family Village.  Sitting on the floor with a helper by her side, we watched her as she gently encouraged a child with special needs to sit up, to reach out for a treat, and to stand with her help. It was all exhausting work for the little boy who had little strength and muscle tone.  But it was important work. 

That’s the thing about this place…it’s all such important work.  These precious little children deserve this kind of patient and loving attention.  They deserve to have someone looking out for them.  Like all children, they don’t just need a bed, three meals and a safe environment.  They need people to care about them, to engage them and encourage them, to help them explore their world and learn, to tell them they’re special, to love them.  Half the Sky does all this. 

To borrow the words of Arlene’s “tapping chant”… I deeply and completely love Half the Sky.

–Jeannette Levitt

Today was a day defined for me by Janie Moments: three times, I laughed out in complete hilarity, and each time, the cause of that moment of pure joy was Janie.

Janie Moment #1:

We had just finished the first coat of color in the last room left to paint, and we were washing our hands to get ready for lunch. The nearest bathroom had kid-height sinks, and Janie, being fairly tall, bent over to turn the water on and, in the process, took out a bucket that was awkwardly lodged in the sink.

I took the sink to her left and was rubbing soap onto my hands when I heard the Janie Groan – the sound she makes when she’s realized that something unexpected has happened: soapy water was leaking out the bottom of her sink, spreading all over the floor. The bucket had been stuck in the sink because the drain wasn’t connected to any pipes; without the bucket, the water had no place to go but the floor.

While Janie scrambled to find some mops, I was doubled over laughing twice as hard in a moment of déjà vu: almost exactly twenty-four hours before, we had been washing out paint buckets in a bathroom on the third-floor. Janie, being as efficient and sensible as she is, went for the biggest sink so that she could turn on the water full blast, soak the bucket in it and quickly wash out all the paint.

I didn’t know what color paint she was washing until I saw a steady stream of blue water sloshing out the bottom of the sink, which was also not connected to any piping. Janie made her token groan, and we both scrambled to find dirty rags to push the blue puddle down the floor drain. (Janie later told me that, before we found the drain, she was devastated because she could just envision the blue water seeping through the second-floor ceiling and dripping onto sleeping babies’ heads.)

But back to the present, after I had stopped laughing, I started to say something – but Janie saw my mouth open and immediately cut me off.

“Don’t even, Patrick – don’t say a word,” she said. “I know my kids will read that blog…”  The look on Janie’s face as she contemplated her three kids and husband reading about her painting exploits was one of slight horror and complete embarrassment.

Janie has now learned never to trust Chinese sinks – as she seems to have a knack for finding the dysfunctional ones and nevertheless pouring large amounts of liquid into them, only to discover that it all ends up on the floor.

Janie Moment #2:

All of the latex painting team – Lea, Patti, Janie and I – were scrambling at the end of the day to finish up the last room so that it would be ready for the party on Sunday. Lea was taking tape off the walls while Patti and I were painting on the last band of blue.

Janie decided to take on the task of doing touch-ups with the green paint, and she planted herself in a corner to re-paint the edge of a wall. The room was silent – everyone was concentrating on getting their respective tasks completed – when, all of a sudden, a Janie Groan broke the calm: she had just realized that the corner she was working on still had masking tape on it, which meant the past ten or so minutes of her meticulous work was for nothing. After a few more groans, she tore the tape off the wall and started over, while Patti and I tried our best to focus on the blue band and refrain from giggling.

Janie Moment #3:

We were on the way back to the hotel, and Janie and Lea were playing a game of concentration – “no repeats, no hesitations” – and the topic was countries. The object of the game is to recite the name of a country in a steady rhythm, alternating between the two players. If you hesitate, then you’re out.

They had been going for a while, and finally reached the Stans.

“Tajikistan,” said Lea.

Clap, clap.

“Uzbekistan,” replied Janie. 

Clap, clap.

“Kyrgyzstan,” Lea countered.

Clap, clap…

There was a tense millisecond where it seemed like Janie might miss a beat – but then she came up with a response: “Arubistan!”

The bus fell silent as we contemplated whether Arubistan actually existed or not…and then we broke down in laughter.

Thank you, Janie, for making my day. Without you, I’m not sure I would have made it through staring at green walls and smelling latex paint for six hours.

Of course, the day was more than just Janie Moments.

We had a chance to shadow Debbie Tong’s training session for working with physically disabled children.

When we stopped by, Debbie was working one-on-one with a boy who has cerebral palsy.  After witnessing almost half an hour of therapy, I was moved by how brave the boy was: he was stuck in a room full of almost thirty adult strangers, all peering at him expectantly while taking furious notes. Despite being in a fishbowl, he paid the most attention to Debbie, who was enticing him with chocolate, a lollipop, and eventually a play ball to sit up straight on his own, and then to stand up straight on his own – a mighty task for the boy to handle.

But what I saw behind Debbie’s intensity of focus and effort was a persistent faith that the child could, mostly on his own, sit and stand up. She would often slap away the encroaching hands of other assistants or institution staff when they got too close or were just trying to stand the boy up themselves, because she knew that, in the long run, just doing things for the kids wouldn’t help them at all.

And the payoff was worth it: the boy was able to stand up, for an instant, on his own, and he got to happily munch on some chocolate for his effort. That moment of success, though fleeting, elicited cheers and hearty applause from the audience of Half the Sky staff and volunteers; I could feel a collective sigh of relief and excitement that, in a very small way, we had made progress today.

Living in Changchun for the past week, I’ve been overwhelmed by the bombastic signs of progress flaunted along every street. Huge tractors and diggers line every corner at construction site after construction site, and advertisements for new apartment buildings – some with Donald Trump’s face on them – cover massive billboards that span the traffic-congested roads. Everywhere I look, there’s something that reminds me of Changchun’s growing eminence, but for some reason, I haven’t been impressed.

Spending five minutes watching Debbie work, though, impressed me to an extent that shiny posters and tall buildings could never do. It’s because I know that, even if the boy hadn’t been able to sit or stand on his own, it wouldn’t have been a failed training demonstration from Debbie’s perspective. What she showed everyone in that room for half an hour was what foster parents will have to undertake every day, to make and build on small steps of progress. There usually won’t be a big payoff or cause for celebration. Instead, it’s the bite-sized and ephemeral signs of improvement that are the most inspiring, because nurturing another human being is a lifelong pursuit that draws on patience, love and undying faith. The fact that Half the Sky’s foster mothers take on four, even five children with special needs is astounding. That’s a demonstration of the human capacity for love that no one – especially not a corporation or international multibillionaire – can surpass. 

The day ended with a fantastic banquet put on by the institution staff for Half the Sky administrators, employees and volunteers. The food, as always, was superb, but what made the night was the flurry of karaoke performances that overtook the end of the celebratory dinner.

Perhaps the most memorable was the exchange between the orphanage’s director and vice-director: the director would start singing in his loud, booming voice, and then gesture politely toward the vice-director to sing the next verse. She would oblige, but only for one line, after which she would whisper to the director to sing with her – the only problem being that both had microphones, which meant the entire room heard their exchanges. This back and forth continued for a while, until the song lyrics stopped showing up on the TV screen. The room awkwardly launched into tepid, tentative applause, when all of a sudden, the vice-director burst out in music and finished out the song. (The moment, I’m sure, would have been ten times funnier had it been Janie singing and, hopefully, spontaneously executing another priceless Janie Moment.) – Patrick Lee

Thirty-two bicycles with training wheels, wagons, tike-bikes, rocking horses, & push-walkers are all assembled and ready for kids.  Nine rooms, 52 tables, and 104 chairs are all painted, each with two-three coats of paint.  Eleven volunteers, with paint-stained clothes and very full hearts, are feeling incredibly blessed to have been part of this experience. 

Surprisingly, we finished painting and assembling everything today, slightly ahead of schedule.  (I’m quite confident that’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever finished something early!!)  Now that we are done with our part, the preschool teachers are able to start moving bookcases and toys, and set up their classrooms this afternoon.  We wanted to help them at least move things into the rooms, but it’s very important to Wen, the preschool director, to have the teachers clean the rooms and set them up, so they can take ownership of them. They will spend today and tomorrow getting the rooms set up, and we’ll have our big party/grand opening on Sunday. 

While the teachers were moving bookcases, a few of us went upstairs to sit in on some more of Debbie Tong’s foster mom training.  Debbie is the Associate Director of Special Needs for Half the Sky & a pediatric physical therapist at Stanford’s Children’s Hospital. 

We learned yesterday that children with physical disabilities are eligible for adoption, but those with cognitive impairment are considered “unadoptable” by the Chinese government.  Half the Sky is now moving those kids out of the orphanages, and into apartments in their Family Villages Program, which is yet another remarkable program.   They will become part of a family with a mom, dad, and siblings. They will live in apartments in a building adjacent to the orphanage, or sometimes in apartments on the top floor of the orphanage, in order to support each other.  Each family will have four (yes, FOUR!) children with specials needs whom they have committed to raising for life.  Incredible.  It must be a married couple who has already raised a child, and one parent must be gainfully employed.  

When we left the room, one new foster mom came out and gestured that she wanted to have her picture taken with us.  She told us, in Chinese, that we have good hearts and tapped her chest.  Gloria, who can speak Mandarin, said, “No, you all are the ones with the good hearts.”  Her response was so humble—“No, not me.  I’m just retired.”  (Many of the nannies and foster moms are women who love kids and have reached the forced retirement age of 45 or 50…and obviously still have lots of love to share.)  

I think about these incredible women and men – who are about to take on four children with special needs (often who all have different disabilities — one with cerebral palsy, one with Down syndrome, one blind child, and one with another disability, for instance) and commit to raising them for a lifetime.   It’s astounding. 

The stories we hear each day are incredible—Carol needs to write a book, for sure.  She shared one of her favorite stories, about a time in Nanning where she was fortunate to be there the day they were forming the foster families.  The way she described it reminded me very much of our adoption trips.  Six couples were sitting in a room, anxiously holding hands, and waiting for the kids to come in.  All of a sudden a line of four children march in (all holding on to the shirt in front of them, as we’ve seen here in the orphanage) and are taken over to meet their new parents.  In a matter of minutes, the room is completely wonderfully chaotic – 24 new sons and daughters, and 6 new sets of proud parents. 

According to Carol, it’s the fathers who are the most emotional of all.  She particularly remembers one new dad in Nanning, who came over to her, bowing and thanking her, and grasping both of her hands.  He was crying, she was crying, I think the entire room was crying.  As he bowed and shook her hands, he was saying in Chinese, “Thank you…Thank you so much…Thank you for filling the hole in my heart,” and Carol, crying, was thanking him just as profusely and telling him that he is her hero…that all of these parents are her heroes.  He then came over with his arms around all four of his children, and said, very proudly, “I’d like to introduce you to my family.”   

What an incredible, wonderful, emotional day—as they’ve all been.   We’re so blessed to be here. – Kim Beagle